With the same skill he brings to his perfumes, Frédéric Malle gives his family’s Fifth Avenue apartment decidedly modern Verve

If childhood is when one’s aesthetic tendencies take root, then perfumer Frédéric Malle and his wife, Marie, were raised on fertile ground. His youth was spent in elegant Paris salons decorated by family friend Victor Grandpierre, the man who gave the Christian Dior couture house its hallmark Louis XVI Revival chic. Hers, on the other hand, included weekends at her parents’ famous country house, Château de Groussay, which had been spellbindingly restored during World War II by her tastemaking granduncle Charles de Beistegui. So it stands to reason that the Malles’ new apartment, on the upper reaches of Fifth Avenue in New York City, might reflect those bountiful influences. Think again.

Beistegui would be delighted to see a mahogany hall bench he designed with architect Emilio Terry standing front and center when the entrance door swings open, its golden CB monogram polished to perfection. The louche sectional sofa by Cassina snaking across the living room, however, would have given the late grandee of Groussay palpitations. “I never thought I’d buy anything like that, but it’s very well designed,” admits the founder of Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle, a firm that produces cult-sensation scents by the world’s leading “noses.”

Home to the Malles and their nine-year-old daughter, Jeanne, since 2009 (the couple’s other children, Louise, Lucien, and Paul, are at college or boarding school), the spacious apartment is replete with similar pulse-quickening pairings that give it a singularly modern allure. “I mix furniture like I mix ingredients for perfumes,” says Frédéric, who has olfactory genius in his genes—his grandfather launched Dior’s fragrance division. “Decorating is the same: a matter of balance,” he continues. “Objects have different weights, visual or actual. Some are stronger than others in color or shape.”

What has passed muster here amounts to room after room of visual intrigue, combinations that look impossible at first glance but which seem inarguable upon reflection. Eighteenth-century gilt-bronze sconces insouciantly flank a Harry Bertoia bench in the entrance hall, not far from a giant ping-pong ball suspended in midair that turns out to be a boule électromagnétique by Greek artist Takis. “He was one of the heroes of an exhibition at the Grand Palais in 1972,” Frédéric says. “That show was one of my first real contacts with modern art.” Alongside a raspberry-red-curtained window with a Central Park view stands a Louis XV secrétaire en pente partnered with a minimalist Mario Bellini leather chair. In a corner of the living room, a swooping Arco floor lamp by Achille Castiglioni illuminates a huge Italian Renaissance painting framed in glittering gilt wood.

For the most part, the lady of the house agrees with the strangely felicitous clashes that distinguish le style Malle. “Frédéric is the creative one, but I know what I am comfortable with and what I dislike,” says Marie, a clinical psychologist and licensed social worker. Her husband adds, laughing, “And she is very good at letting me know that, often quite strongly.”

Suffice it to say this cabinet of curiosities has raised eyebrows. “My father-in-law spent ten days here in November,” Frédéric confides, referring to Johnny de Beistegui, a connoisseur of Old Master paintings and drawings, “and he was quite surprised by what we have done. It’s new territory for him.” Marie avers, “It’s good for Frédéric and me to have our own style, not his parents’ style or my parents’ style.” Husband and wife are practically empty nesters by now, a condition that impacts their surroundings. “The way you live evolves according to what you buy—and according to how many children you have in the apartment,” Frédéric says with a grin.

Before the Malles could move from their former residence, a triplex on the Upper East Side, superficial adjustments were required. Swiftly jettisoned were the living room’s mirrored walls, as well as a faux-Georgian mantel, an ornament Frédéric calls “absolutely horrid.” Lengths of fussy paneled wainscot were ripped out, too. The couple also requisitioned a maid’s room next to the kitchen. Opened up, it is now a breakfast alcove peppered with lithographs by Robert Longo and Roy Lichtenstein as well as an abstract watercolor done by the Malles’ daughter Louise when she was five.

The most impressive of Frédéric’s alterations is arguably the simplest: After tossing the offending Georgian-style mantel, he bumped out a section of wall in the living room to mimic a substantial chimney-breast, and then fronted it with an antique Louis XVI stone surround. (It’s a cosmetic change; the fireplace doesn’t actually work.) The replacement mantel isn’t as finely carved as one Frédéric discovered in Paris and planned to ship across the Atlantic, but designer friend Patrick Naggar, who renovated the perfumer’s Madison Avenue shop, urged moderation. “He told me the cheminée I wanted was too nice and would make everything around it look fake,” Frédéric recounts. “It was very clever advice—to have something good but not so extraordinary that it stands out.” Young Jeanne should be taking notes; some childhood design lessons are well worth deploying as an adult.